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Encaustics

Charissa is a sacred artist who has fallen in love with encaustic painting. Painting with hot wax is a wonderfully tactile medium that fosters the interplay of two-dimensional and three-dimensional art and sometimes blurs the line between the two; therefore, encaustics act as a means to engage both sculpting and painting. Encaustic itself is the inspiration. It breathes life into her ideas. Substrates and surfaces are fashioned based upon what can receive encaustic medium. Encaustics can be done on anything porous. This fact opens up opportunities for all sorts of pieces. Charissa has long been fascinated by textures and negative space. Encaustics lend themselves to experimentation in textures. Like clay, encaustics can be smoothed out, gouged into, etched into, and shaped and formed.

Encaustic painting is an ancient medium of painting with hot wax. It involves painting with a mixture of heated beeswax and damar resin, to which colored pigments are added. Painting with encaustic medium involves the use of a griddle and heat gun to heat and move the medium and fuse layers. It also involvies using natural brushes to paint, as well as using things that can make marks and textures, much like one might see in ceramics.